Dodging Rockets

Ok, so it’s been more than a year since I posted to my own blog. How pathetic is that? I guess now I really need to rant, being even more of a non-person than I was before…having been lowered to the position of “Technical difficultly”.

Sitting here, only to jump up every few nanoseconds to run for cover from rockets raining down from the north, I wonder if any of the incoming have my name written on them or at least something written by Lebanese children similar to the darling messages sent by Israeli children on missiles dropped on the Lebanese children.

As a technical difficulty, myself, my family, my neighbors, and everyone else in our town are not deemed worthy of shelters or even warnings of any kind. One day last week, I saw on the internet, 4 hours after the fact, that we were apparently warned to take cover because someone had some intelligence (if you could call it that) that rockets were going to hit somewhere around here. I wonder who was told. I guess they forgot to pass the intelligence on to those of us who might be affected (i.e. anyone living in this town) because no one I knew heard anything about it. Maybe they told the Mayor, who promptly took cover and forgot to pass the message on. Fortunately for the majority of us around here who have brains, we took cover anyway because the explosions were just a little bit too loud to mistake for the slamming of car doors or illegal fireworks.

We rely on the goodness of neighboring towns, whose inhabitants are much higher on the critically important list. Because of their stature and level of importance they have fully functional sirens and actual warnings of incoming rockets. When the wind is blowing in the right direction, we can actually hear these sirens before the explosions. Many times, however, we hear the explosions and then, after hushing the terrified children, strain to hear if there are any sirens calling from the direction of the critically important. Otherwise, the terrifying sounds could just be one of those idiot kids who has somehow got ahold of illegal fireworks or a very large truck literally bouncing its way through our town with the hope that no rockets will fall here.

Unfortunately, our town has not even risen to the important distinction of Human Shields. Those areas which have this label are lucky in that, while still inhabited by the technically difficult, they are completely surrounded by areas containing critically important inhabitants. Therefore, when the rockets do start falling near those areas, the technically difficult get much louder warnings, the sirens being in much closer proximity.

Don’t get me wrong. I feel for those thousands upon thousands of inhabitants who must live in shelters for days on end. Or even for the refugees who have had to leave their homes and flee south. At least we don’t have that problem. We have a bathroom, which is convenient because, well, you know. You get stuck in the bathroom for days on end, you need a bathroom. Of course, we don’t sleep in there, that would be disgusting. We take our chances and sleep in the next safest room in the house…the room that is farthest away from the gas station right across the street. Imagine for yourself what might happen if a rocket landed there…because I don’t want to.

I guess that’s about it for today. Gotta run to the bathroom with the kids, the barrage is continuing…..